Comprehension
by Cheeseburger of Doom
Summary: [Warlords 10, NiouYagyuu] Niou does not understand Yagyuu, but Yagyuu understand Niou all too well.


A/N: Whoa, it's number ten! This one is Niou's story. (or Yagyuu's, maybe...) Niou's a pretty big bastard in this universe. So is Mizuki. Mizuki doesn't get his own story though...his life has been pretty much explained by other characters. So why am I talking about Mizuki? Who knows.

Anyway, the usual warnings...much angst, character death(s), immoral stuff, AU, twisting around of the personalities...etc. etc. Ah, and this fic...is weird. I didn't really know much about Niou and Yagyuu back when I wrote it, which really doesn't matter all that much, but it sounds like a fairly good excuse...ah, then again, I could blame the weirdness factor on it being AU. Yes, indeed I shall.

Warlords #10:

Comprehension

Niou loved power. He always had. When Sanada left the gang and he became leader, he revelled in it.

If only Yukimura were alive...but if he were alive, Niou would not be the leader, now would he?

Niou was not the type to feel guilty. He was not the type to feel anything at all, really. When Yukimura was alive, Niou had loved him. Niou was not the type to feel love, and yet he had. Well, everyone had loved Yukimura; it was impossible not to, really.

Niou did not feel guilt, he felt anger. He hated Sanada, and blamed Sanada for Yukimura's death. He held fast to the belief that if Yukimura had lived, he would have killed Sanada, become the leader, and won Yukimura for himself. He believed that he deserved Yukimura a hell of a lot more than Sanada did.

Yagyuu knew all that Niou felt, almost as well as if he were Niou himself. He was at Niou's side both day and night, and knew Niou as no one else ever had, or ever would. He could see Niou's soul.

Niou did not know that Yagyuu knew him so well. He did not know anything about Yagyuu, really, even though Yagyuu was basically his slave. Yagyuu was always there, ready to be ordered around, and that was all he cared about.

Yagyuu did not care that Niou did not care. He knew Niou enough to realize that Niou would never care, not about anyone but himself.

He'd only ever cared about one person, and that person was dead. Even when that person had been alive, he had not known _how_ to care; had tried to ignore his own feelings and make them go away.

Yagyuu had also loved Yukimura, but not that much. Not that way. There was only one person he would ever love in that way, and that person would never, ever care.

He knew that all too well.

-----

Yagyuu liked to remember. Niou had never been a very nice person, but once he had been less power-hungry; more human. Once, he'd had some sort of innocence about him. Once upon a time, he had smiled at Yagyuu once in a while, and treated him almost like a friend.

Yagyuu liked to remember the few times in their childhood when they'd wandered off together and lost themselves for days. Niou had liked to piss off the gang leader that way. He was given to mischief. He liked to prove that he was just as powerful as anyone, in his own way.

He'd always been obsessed with power.

They'd hidden themselves away in abandoned apartment complexes, and spent all their time playing poker. Niou liked to cheat, but Yagyuu always won anyway. He was just better at it than Niou. It had never failed to make Niou incredibly angry. He'd always thrown down his cards after every game, exclaiming about how stupid he was for even bothering to bring Yagyuu along, if Yagyuu was going to do nothing but win all the time.

Niou had never brought anyone else with him, though. Niou had never asked anyone else to pull pranks with him, ever.

Niou stopped asking Yagyuu to do things with him when they were both thirteen, and started ordering him around, instead. He liked to show off what power he had.

Yagyuu didn't care. He'd always known it would come to that. He knew Niou better than anyone, after all. He could see Niou's soul.

-----

"Yagyuu...you're a good boy, aren't you?" Niou said, suddenly. Usually Niou did not feel like talking at night, so Yagyuu was a little surprised. The surprise did not last long, though; one of the things he understood well about Niou was the fact that he could often be unpredictable.

"You always follow orders. You never argue. If you lived on the outside, you'd be one of those goody-goody nerd-types," Niou said. "Somebody who got picked on in high school...or maybe somebody who commanded the respect of the entire high school, because of his intelligence."

"That hardly makes me a good boy," Yagyuu said.

"I guess not. Maybe you're just as nasty as I am, behind that frozen expression."

Yagyuu supposed that Niou was being this philosophical because he was in a bad mood. He'd failed to get Sanada back yet again. It had taken Yagyuu some time to understand why Niou wanted Sanada back in the gang at all -- he wanted to rule over Sanada and make him suffer. He wanted to show Sanada his power, and prove that he was more worthy of Yukimura's love that Sanada had ever been.

"I think I might be nastier," Yagyuu said. It was not often that he felt like talking. Conversation was not something he was very good at. That was fine, because Niou rarely talked to him, and Yagyuu never spent time with anyone else.

Tonight, though, he felt like talking. If Niou felt like talking, then so did he.

Maybe Yagyuu was in a bad mood, as well.

"Nastier than me?" Niou laughed. "Not you."

No, Niou did not know Yagyuu very well at all.

"Now go to sleep already. I'm sick of talking." Niou turned his back to Yagyuu, and Yagyuu stared at the ceiling for a while. He never got much sleep. There were too many things to think about late at night. Too many things to remember.

-----

Yagyuu did not care when Niou invited -- or, rather, ordered -- others into their bed. Niou did that a few times with a few different people, before he settled on Kirihara as their constant pet. It seemed to satisfy him, so Yagyuu put up with it. He could deal with anything that Niou threw at him, because he understood Niou's desires entirely too well. He understood them as if they were his own.

When Kirihara rebelled and stopped coming to them, Niou grew restless. Yagyuu knew that Niou would never be satisfied with just him, because he was too willing to let Niou use his body. It was not fun for him if his toy was willing. He could have tried to get Kirihara back, but Yanagi would definitely have killed him for it.

Niou hated to admit it, but Yanagi was stronger than he was.

"I guess I'll just have to be satisfied with you," Niou murmured. "You're not so bad, I guess. It's a little boring with the two of us, though. You never react to anything."

Yagyuu did not react to that statement, either. What was he supposed to say, supposed to do? He knew what Niou wanted, but in this, he could never give it to him. Niou already owned him, body and soul, and there was no challenge.

"Would you prefer if I pretend to be afraid of you?" Yagyuu asked. That got a laugh out of Niou.

"I wouldn't believe it, coming from you," he said.

Maybe Niou understood Yagyuu more than he'd thought.

-----

Yagyuu knew Niou entirely too well. If Niou had never been born, Yagyuu would have been the power-hungry one. He would have been the new leader of the gang, and he would have been in love with Yukimura when he was alive. If Niou had never been born, Yagyuu would have been Niou.

If Niou had never been born, Yagyuu would never have existed. Yagyuu existed only for Niou. If Niou wanted Yagyuu as his slave, then Yagyuu had no choice but to comply.

He didn't care, really. He did not care that Niou did not care. The only thing that he actually cared about was the fact that Niou never smiled at him anymore.

Just one smile would have been nice. Of course, he knew that would never happen. He'd always known that those smiles would stop. He shouldn't have cared, but he did.

Yagyuu knew Niou too well to expect anything out of him, but that didn't stop him from feeling, if only just a little.

After all, there was only one person in the world that Yagyuu would ever love, and that was Niou Masaharu; even if Niou Masaharu would never love him back. Even if that love was so twisted that he couldn't even begin to unravel it in his heart.


End file.
